OHIO EDUCATION Change school funding, state senator says

By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
MINERAL RIDGE -- Ohio's system of funding public schools is woefully inadequate and must be improved to promote economic development in Ohio, a state senator told an advocacy organization here.
"Virtually any way to fund schools is better than the system that we have," state Sen. Marc Dann, D-32nd, of Liberty, said Monday. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled four times that the state's school-funding system, which relies heavily on property taxes, is unconstitutional, he said.
Dann, a former member of the Liberty school board, told about 20 people at a town-hall meeting arranged by Ohio Taxpayers for Equitable School Funding that he would try to connect them with other similar groups elsewhere in the state to lobby for school-funding change.
Education funding reform will require strong leadership, he said. "We need somebody who's got the gumption to take a bold and serious plan to the voters" that fundamentally overhauls the state's tax structure, he said.
District finances
Dr. Douglas Darnall, a psychologist and president of the Weathersfield school board, said school officials are frustrated with the district's current financial plight.
Voters defeated the district's request for a 1 percent income tax in November 2002 and for a 9.5-mill property tax levy last November. The district laid off six bus drivers when it cut busing to state minimum at the beginning of this year, he said.
Six teachers and a food-service supervisor likely won't be replaced when they retire at the end of this school year, he said. The district will ask for a 5.5-mill levy in a special election in August and has a 5.1-mill renewal on the ballot next year.
"Our goal is to maintain a quality level of education for all children. It costs money. The burden is very clear. It's on the taxpayers," Darnall said, adding that state officials "have to create alternatives for funding and comply with the Supreme Court decision."
"It's not equitable," Debbie Maust, chairwoman of the advocacy group that sponsored the meeting, said of the state's present school-funding system.
"It is not sustaining our students, and there's an overreliance on property tax," said Maust, a former Weathersfield school-board member.
Impact on academics
"We've done a great job of setting [academic proficiency] standards, but we have not provided the districts the tools they need to help the children achieve those standards," Dann said. "We're requiring school districts to do things for which we are not providing them funding."
Adequate school funding and academic performance "is absolutely vital, and probably no place more vital than in this part of the state," the senator said, calling it "our only hope of becoming economically competitive in the future" as jobs require more advanced academic skills.
"We're not going to be competitive if we remain at that place. And we're not going to get more kids to go to college if we're not providing them with a high quality pre-K-12 education," he said.
milliken@vindy.com